The next time you’re feeling stressed, irritable, anxious or tense – listen to a little tune. Future studies using music stimuli in which anticipatory expectations are violated or computer generated music in which only the anticipatory component is included could be used to more clearly differentiate the anticipatory phase from the consumption phase in music 60 , 61 In addition, future PET studies using both dopamine and opioid radiotracers can further shed light on how these two systems interact.
In addition to this music having a function of getting in tune with the environment, it also has the effect of getting a group of people on the same wavelength, which can be explained either through their collective association with the mood and time of the raga or through its more objective work in the realm of vibrational interaction and connection with those forces that share such vibration.
The expressivity of music seems closely related to the resemblance between the dynamic character of both the music and the emotions it is expressive of. It is implausible that funeral marches might just as easily have been in quick-paced compound-time.
The fact that music listening triggers a well-defined neurochemical response suggests an evolutionary origin for music, although one must be cautious and not over-interpret these results; it is also possible that music has developed to exploit an already existing reward system that evolved for other purposes, such as recognizing and responding appropriately to various human and animal vocalizations.
By this he meant that all of the work that you do in the process of making music affects how you interact with the world on a daily basis, and conversely – and perhaps as an explanation – you take all of your interactions with the world into your music.